Notes: Study from Unpaywall founders to identify OA status in three samples of articles. While estimating 28% (to 2015) of the scholarly literature is OA and growing, they also identify the complexities of the OA scholarly publishing landscape, finding a large proportion in the category of Bronze, articles free/open to read but lacking reuse or license data.

Abstract

Despite growing interest in Open Access (OA) to scholarly literature, there is an unmet need for large-scale, up-to-date, and reproducible studies assessing the prevalence and characteristics of OA. We address this need using oaDOI, an open online service that determines OA status for 67 million articles. We use three samples, each of 100,000 articles, to investigate OA in three populations: (1) all journal articles assigned a Crossref DOI, (2) recent journal articles indexed in Web of Science, and (3) articles viewed by users of Unpaywall, an open-source browser extension that lets users find OA articles using oaDOI. We estimate that at least 28% of the scholarly literature is OA (19M in total) and that this proportion is growing, driven particularly by growth in Gold and Hybrid. The most recent year analyzed (2015) also has the highest percentage of OA (45%). Because of this growth, and the fact that readers disproportionately access newer articles, we find that Unpaywall users encounter OA quite frequently: 47% of articles they view are OA. Notably, the most common mechanism for OA is not Gold, Green, or Hybrid OA, but rather an under-discussed category we dub Bronze: articles made free-to-read on the publisher website, without an explicit Open license. We also examine the citation impact of OA articles, corroborating the so-called open-access citation advantage: accounting for age and discipline, OA articles receive 18% more citations than average, an effect driven primarily by Green and Hybrid OA. We encourage further research using the free oaDOI service, as a way to inform OA policy and practice.

Notes: This 2017 article estimates the growth in hybrid OA journals and articles published within from 2009 to 2016. from 20 publishers Most interesting is the difficulty experienced in obtaining data because the hybridity of a journal is not always indicated. The author used previous studies and more recent data from 15 publishers who agreed to share, plus 5 big publishers. However data are not itemised for each publisher.

Abstract

Hybrid Open Access is an intermediate form of OA, where authors pay scholarly publishers to make articles freely accessible within journals, in which reading the content otherwise requires a subscription or pay-per-view. Major scholarly publishers have in recent years started providing the hybrid option for the vast majority of their journals. Since the uptake usually has been low per journal and scattered over thousands of journals, it has been very difficult to obtain an overview of how common hybrid articles are. This study, using the results of earlier studies as well as a variety of methods, measures the evolution of hybrid OA over time. The number of journals offering the hybrid option has increased from around 2,000 in 2009 to almost 10,000 in 2016. The number of individual articles has in the same period grown from an estimated 8,000 in 2009 to 45,000 in 2016. The growth in article numbers has clearly increased since 2014, after some major research funders in Europe started to introduce new centralized payment schemes for the article processing charges (APCs).

TItle: Open Research Data: Report to the Australian National Data Service (ANDS)

Authors:John Houghton. Nicolas Gruen

Summary:
An interesting 2014 report assessing the value of data in Australia’s public research. Estimates for Australia extrapolated and scaled from UK studies. Staffing makes up more than 50% and up to 90% of the cost.

Main points:

Research data are an asset we have been building for decades, through billions of dollars of bublic investment in research annually. The information and communication technology (ICT) revolution presents an unprecedented opportunity to ‘leverage’ that asset. Given this, there is

increasing awareness around the world that there are benefits to be gained from curating and openly sharing research data (Kvalheim and Kvamme 2014).

Conservatively, we estimate that the value of data in Australia’s public research to be at least $1.9 billion and possibly up to $6 billion a year at current levels of expenditure and activity. Research data curation and sharing might be worth at least $1.8 billion and possibly up to $5.5 billion a year of which perhaps $1.4 billion to $4.9 billion annually is yet to be realized. Hence, any policy around public funded research data should aim to realise as much of this unrealised value as practicable.

Author: Jack hang Tat Leong

Notes:

Analyses 18 North American and European university mission statements for evidence of community engagement and outreach and reviews how their libraries engage the community with outreach activities: connecting universities, people, resources and knowledge.

Abstract

This article examines different outreach strategies in academic libraries in Canada, the United States and China. It analyzes the possibilities and concerns of community outreach and argues that community outreach by libraries is the best approach to respond to the increasing significance of community engagement in academic environment. Drawing on the outreach program at the University of Toronto Libraries, this paper demonstrates that academic libraries can effectively connect resources and enable interactions between scholars and the public. These connections and interactions ultimately lead to the preservation and generation of knowledge and understanding. Available outreach examples are investigated and classified into four major categories: 1) community access, 2) information literacy, 3) cooperation, exchange and partnership, and 4) exhibitions and scholarly events. In each category the trends and values are illustrated by representative cases discussed in literature and the activities organized by the author in his capacity as the Director of the Richard Charles Lee Canada-Hong Kong Library, and the Chair of the International and Community Outreach Committee at the University of Toronto Libraries. The discussion and analysis of the diverse outreach activities in this article provide guidance and suggestions for academic librarians who are interested in outreach and community engagement of any scale and nature. Cases are draw from a wide spectrum and are particularly strong in the setting of large academic libraries, special collections and programming for multicultural populations.

Comments: This article suggests clear citation advantage for OA publishing, though the analysis was restricted to scholarly articles and ignored the legal status of full-texts.

Abstract: First, we aim to determine the total amount of scholarly articles freely available on the internet. Second, we aim to prove whether there exists a citation advantage for open publishing. The total scholarly publication output of Norway is indexed in Cristin, the Current Information System in Norway. Based on these data, we searched Google Scholar by either DOIs or titles and denoted a document as open available (OAv), when a link to a full-text was provided. We analysed the extracted data by publishing year, citations, availability and provider. Based on additional information indexed in Cristin, we furthermore analysed the data by year, institution, publisher and discipline. We find that the total share of freely available articles is 68%. Articles not available belong to prestigious publishers such as Elsevier, Springer, Routledge and Universitetsforlaget (the largest Norwegian academic publisher), which may be particularly essential for scholars worldwide. The largest provider, according to Google Scholar’s main link provision, is ResearchGate. In addition, institutional repositories play a major role in posting free article versions. Articles belonging to natural sciences and technology, and medicine and health were more likely to be open than articles belonging to the social sciences and humanities. Their respective OAv-shares are 72, 58 and 55%. We find a clear citation advantage for open publishing; on average, these documents received twice as many citations, indicating that open access is the future in publishing. This study is limited to scholarly articles only. Books and book chapters, which are usual publication formats for the humanities and social sciences, are excluded. Results do therefore not adequately reflect the situation for these disciplines. Furthermore, this study is limited to documents freely available on the internet, independent of the “legal” status of the posted full-text. With the data at hand, we were not able to distinguish between gold, green, hybrid, purely pay-walled and illicitly posted documents. Usually, articles indexed in Web of Science or SCOPUS are objects of investigation. However, these databases do not sufficiently cover the humanities and social sciences, and therefore cannot be representative of the total scholarly article output. This study captures the total article output of a country, independent on discipline and provides new insight into open publishing.

Comment: A brief article that speculates on a potential correlation or connectjon between open access repositories rankings (RWR) and wider university rankings (RWU) for top 4-5 universities in Switzerland, Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, Austria. Compares changes in position in the two ranking systems from 2012 to 2013. Perhaps open access policies are a reason? Limited data but interesting hypothesis.

Abstract.

This study takes a closer look at the Ranking Web of Universities and Ranking Web of Repositories rankings and tries to examine if there is a connection between these two rankings. Study is done by analyzing the success of University of Jyväskylä and the institutional repository JyX of the University in these rankings. Comparison shows that the JyX archive plays an important role in University’s success especially when analyzing the presence and openness of the University. By analyzing the success of eight European countries in these rankings and cross reading these findings with the development of

relative citation impact shown in a report by the Finnish Academy, some interesting common trends can be seen. The same three countries Finland, Denmark and Norway seem to be on their way up in all comparisons. Open Access activities in these countries can be seen as one explaining factor.

Olsbo, P. (2013). Does openness and open access policy relate to the success of universities? Information Services & Use 33, 87–91.

Comment:Extensive review/overview of academic, social and economic impacts of OA and different stakeholders in terms of scholarly publishing north/south and briefly open data and open science.

Abstract:
Ongoing debates surrounding Open Access to the scholarly literature are multifaceted and complicated by disparate and often polarised viewpoints from engaged stakeholders. At the current stage, Open Access has become such a global issue that it is critical for all involved in scholarly publishing, including policymakers, publishers, research funders, governments, learned societies, librarians, and academic communities, to be well-informed on the history, benefits, and pitfalls of Open Access. In spite of this, there is a general lack of consensus regarding the potential pros and cons of Open Access at multiple levels. This review aims to be a resource for current knowledge on the impacts of Open Access by synthesizing important research in three major areas: academic, economic and societal. While there is clearly much scope for additional research, several key trends are identified, including a broad citation advantage for researchers who publish openly, as well as additional benefits to the non-academic dissemination of their work. The economic impact of Open Access is less well-understood, although it is clear that access to the research literature is key for innovative enterprises, and a range of governmental and non-governmental services. Furthermore, Open Access has the potential to save both publishers and research funders considerable amounts of financial resources, and can provide some economic benefits to traditionally subscription-based journals. The societal impact of Open Access is strong, in particular for advancing citizen science initiatives, and leveling the playing field for researchers in developing countries. Open Access supersedes all potential alternative modes of access to the scholarly literature through enabling unrestricted re-use, and long-term stability independent of financial constraints of traditional publishers that impede knowledge sharing. However, Open Access has the potential to become unsustainable for research communities if high-cost options are allowed to continue to prevail in a widely unregulated scholarly publishing market. Open Access remains only one of the multiple challenges that the scholarly publishing system is currently facing. Yet, it provides one foundation for increasing engagement with researchers regarding ethical standards of publishing and the broader implications of ‘Open Research’.